In 2016 the famine in sub-Saharan Africa hit rural Zimbabwe hard. So in partnership with the CHBC outreach team at St Alberts hospital, I funded emergency early morning feeding program for ECD and primary children at Sable Heights School; the following term the program was extended to Clearmorning School. Both schools had a high number of orphans enrolled, and all the children, orphans or not, were malnourished. Most had eaten nothing before the long walk to school: they were listless and unable to concentrate. In total a thousand children received the fortified nutritious protein drink known locally as maheu each morning.
2017: A generous group of friends undertook to run a Trivia Evening in mid-May to raise money so that the maheu feeding program can continue—a wonderful response I couldn’t have anticipated. We raised AU$22,000, sufficient to continue the feeding project into 2018.
2018: According to the Global Hunger Index, Zimbabwe is ranked 108th out of 119 countries. The area in which we run the feeding project is one of the worst affected areas.